Monday, July 30, 2012

Your pharmacist agrees to stay past closing time so you can pick up your children's antibiotics.

After handing you the trash bag full of antibiotics for all of your children, he wishes you well and comments that he lives on the same road that he sees listed on your insurance cards.

He calls you ten minutes later to say that he neglected to put said insurance cards (all eighteen of them...two per child) in said trash bag. But that's OK; he'll just drop them off on his way home.

When you say you are not at home but are on another errand, he offers to stick them in the back of your mailbox.

When he sticks them in the back of the mailbox (in the dark of night), a neighbor drives by, slows, and harasses him for messing with your mail.

When you arrive, the neighbor follows you up your driveway to make sure things are on the up-and-up and no one has been doing unsavory things with your mail.

When you see the pharmacist the next day (to pick up antibiotics for the adults in the household) and sheepishly apologize for your neighbor harassing him, he says, "That's OK. I just figured they had your back."

I wonder if he knows our bank teller (four houses down) or the pastor in the church two counties over who stopped by the church for a visit (end of the road) or the daughter of some church friends (across the road from the pastor)???

Tuesday, July 24, 2012

So this July has brought us our first bout with whooping cough. The night I got the call that our 2-yr. old son had tested positive for his pertussis test, I drank a humongous green coffee drink and fretted the night away.

I was really worried. And really caffeinated. And maybe that's the same thing, really.

But then the morning came. We doled out the antibiotics to everyone, noted that the 3-mo. old still had no symptoms, and stocked up on juice, popsicles, humidifiers, and yogurt.

Gideon is the only one who has developed the distinctive "Whoop! Whoop!" and he handles it like a real soldier. He pushes through the coughing fit, rests for a bit, then continues tormenting his 4-yr. old brother.

It really has only marginally slowed the mayhem down. Almost indistinguishably, really.

I've limited my online time, only getting on for emergencies ("Am I supposed to roast the garlic first?") before about 8 PM. The minutes after 8:00 have been spent researching whooping cough, the pertussis vaccine, and recipes (always). Short story: whooping cough is currently an epidemic, the vaccine may actually make things worse (at least, it doesn't help: 80% of people who get whooping cough have been fully vaccinated), and I seem to be inexplicably drawn to recipes to which you can add salsa, sour cream, and cheese.

But also this July brought us Independence Day. I like those pictures better, so I'm sticking those in here.

For the Fourth of July, we visited the Frontier Culture Museum, ate bratwurst and watermelon, read the Declaration of Independence, and found singalong patriotic songs on YouTube.